LPA37: Purifying Death, Bardo, & Rebirth in Anuttarayoga Tantra

Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor

In this letter Tsongkhapa explains, first of all, that we’ve found an excellent working basis (a human rebirth), we’ve met with the teachings, we have great spiritual masters, we have the ability to discern what are the states of mind that we need to adopt, what are the things we need to reject (we have intelligence and common sense). On the basis of all of that, then we need to take advantage of it and engage ourselves in the teachings. 

For that we need to rely on guidance of a teacher, someone who knows how to lead us, knows what are the states of mind to develop and what are the states of mind to get rid of or not to develop, and knows the exact specifications of them, doesn’t add anything, doesn’t leave anything out, and knows the order of how to develop them. The teacher has to have gained this understanding and experience by having been led through a similar path himself or herself by a qualified teacher. And the study needs to be based on the great classics. 

The Motivating Mental Framework

Then to begin the actual training, we need to have the proper motivating mental framework. For this there’s the graded stages according to the lam-rim. 

• Initially we turn away from being interested just in this lifetime and work for the happiness of future lifetimes so that we can continue to have a precious human rebirth and continue on the path. 
• Then we look at the shortcomings of all samsaric rebirth states and develop keen interest for liberation. 
• Then, on the advanced level, we think of everybody and how they are all in the same situation, and we aim for enlightenment and not just our own purposes. 

How To Meditate

We need to have these not just as an intellectual understanding but meditate on them, which means to build them up as habits so that it becomes completely ingrained. How to do this? We need to know the causes of what will help us to develop each of these levels of motivation, what are the different aspects of it. We need to build up a lot of positive force, cleanse away obstacles, have reinforcement of more instructions and inspiration from the Buddhist texts about them, and know then what would be detrimental for developing these states, what would be beneficial for them, know what we need to focus on, how our mind takes it, and like that, how this state of mind that we want to develop will function as well, what benefit will it have and what will it enable us to get rid of. There are many different points that are very helpful to know if we want to build up a certain state of mind, like compassion or renunciation or whatever. We have to maintain these motivations throughout our meditation sessions, not just at the beginning, and throughout all of our days. 

The Ethical Self-discipline of Keeping Vows

Then if we want to practice tantra, specifically the two stages of anuttarayoga tantra, then we need to make sure that we keep the discipline of the vows — some level of pratimoksha vows (the vows for individual liberation) as a lay person or monk or nun, bodhisattva vows, and tantric vows. We’ve gone through all of them. And we need to watch out so that we don’t weaken them or lose them, and so we have to know what the causes are and watch out for these, for the causes that would weaken them. We’ve gone through all of that. Then we need to receive an empowerment in order to enter into the tantra practice, and if we receive an empowerment then we definitely have to keep the vows. In terms of the vows and in terms of practice, it is best if we are a fully ordained monk or nun, and at minimum we need to be a householder and have the householder vows. Tsongkhapa emphasizes that for our practice of tantra it’s very important to have some level of pratimoksha vow and bodhisattva vow. That’s as far as we have gotten. 

Now we’re ready to go on. Tsongkhapa... Let me read the text. His connecting line is: “Be that as it may…” This is referring to the line before. He said that:

(Buddha has clearly set forth all these points) in his presentation of these (vows). But despite this, although people frequently appear who can explain them by expounding forth merely their verbal formulations, and partial ones at that, yet when it comes time to apply these to personal practice,

That’s in terms of the vows.

those who do so appear ever so rarely. This falls in the category of something very difficult to understand.

Now we go on:

Be that as it may, there is the statement, “The Fully Enlightened Buddha has said to those who would be well-established on the generation stage and those who would wish for the complete stage that this method (of practicing the two stages) is like (climbing) the rungs of a ladder.” (This means) that just as we must depend on climbing the lower rungs of a ladder in order to proceed to the higher ones, (likewise) we must travel (the pathway minds to enlightenment) by meditating on the generation and complete stages in their (proper) order. It will not do to (practice them) in just any order of understanding or to leave out the generation stage. As (this is what Buddha) has said, we must first meditate on the generation stage.

Even though there is no certainty that (while on its stage) its (practice) will smooth away the undesirable occurrences that occasionally befall us (such as sicknesses) or bring us the subtle actual attainments we desire (such as clairvoyance), yet it is a fact that the generation stage can bring us to the attainment of peerless enlightenment. This point has been established clearly from the tantric texts of scriptural authority and well-attested to by learned masters who themselves are valid sources. Therefore, I beg you, please, practice (first this generation stage) in the circle of a mandala.

That’s what we need to discuss. The practice of the highest class of tantra is divided into two stages, what’s called the generation stage (bskyed-rim) and the complete stage (rdzogs-rim). Sometimes people translate the latter as the “completion stage.” I must admit that I used to do that as well, but from looking at commentaries that really is not correct. It’s not that you are completing what you started, but rather everything is now complete that you have built up on the generation stage so now you can actually practice with the subtle energy-systems. The term in Tibetan, and in the Sanskrit as well, needs to be taken as “complete” rather than “completing.” 

There’s a lot that can be said about the generation and complete stage. Before we can appreciate why Tsongkhapa puts such emphasis on the generation stage and that it be practiced first, we have to understand a little bit about the actual method that’s used in anuttarayoga tantra, and basically, we need to go back to the four noble truths in order to look at this. 

True Sufferings

Four noble truths. Remember we have true suffering, true origins or source or causes of suffering, true stoppings of them, and true pathway of mind that’s going to lead to that stopping. That stopping means that you get rid of it forever so that it never recurs. 

When we talk about true sufferings, there’s three kinds, as you know. Let me just review. There’s the suffering… Let me ask: Does anybody know what the three kinds are?

Participant: The suffering of suffering (sdug-bsngal-gyi sdug bsnal), or “gross suffering” sometimes. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. The gross suffering.

Participant: Which is like what everybody would consider suffering to be.

Dr. Berzin: What everybody would consider suffering.

Participant: Then the suffering of change (’gyur-ba’i sdug-bsngal), which is our typical defiled pleasure, which is unstable, which is based on like shifting from one troublesome state, ultimately troublesome state, to a different ultimately troublesome state.

Dr. Berzin: OK, the second is the suffering of change, our ordinary tainted pleasure or happiness that doesn’t last and it always will shift from one undesirable state to another.

Participant: Then there is all-pervasive suffering (khyab-par ’du-byed-kyi sdug-bsngal), which is basically being under the influence of karma.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Then the all-pervasive suffering, which is being under the influence of karma and disturbing emotions. Very good. 

We can be a little bit more specific. We can specify that the suffering of suffering is the feeling of unhappiness — when we talk about the aggregate of feelings (tshor-ba’i phung-po) — a feeling of unhappiness which can accompany either a physical perception (it could be with a physical sensation of pain, it could be with seeing something, could be hearing something) and also it can accompany a mental event. 

The suffering of change is referring to our ordinary feeling of happiness that likewise can accompany either a sense cognition or a mental cognition. As Christian pointed out, it doesn’t last, it never satisfies, and it changes into unhappiness at an unpredictable time — we never know. 

Then there is the all-pervasive affecting type of problem or suffering, which are the aggregates basically, having a body and mind — to summarize the five aggregates — a body and mind that is generated by disturbing emotions and karma and contains them so that it will perpetuate. It’s on the basis of having the aggregate factors of body and mind that we experience various objects with either unhappiness or tainted happiness, which is the ripening of karma. Karma — the most general way that karma ripens is these feelings of happy and unhappy. 

True Origins of Suffering

We are talking about here — if you now translate this into the twelve links of dependent arising and look at what are the causes of these aggregates — we’re talking about the first and the second links as being the causes, our unawareness and then the various impulses of karma that come from that based on disturbing emotions, and then that builds up the karmic aftermath. Then we’re talking about the eighth, ninth, and tenth links. Remember, we’re talking about the feeling of happiness or unhappiness as the first two types of sufferings; that’s the seventh link. Then you have craving to either not be separated from it or to be separated from it. Then an obtainer (len-pa), which is an obtainer attitude, basically identifying with this “Me, me, me” — “I’ve got to get rid of this,” or “I have to have it,” etc. And then that activates further existence, the tenth link, which is an activated karmic impulse, and that then throws us into a next lifetime. You follow all of that? We’ve discussed the twelve links. We’ve discussed the four noble truths. 

True Stoppings

If we summarize what it is that we want to get rid of, the true suffering, we could summarize this in terms of the four types of further existence. If we look at the subdivisions of link number ten, the subdivisions of it are… I think it starts the list with bardo existence, conception existence, pre-death existence, and death existence. These are the four subdivisions of it. If we want to summarize those four a little bit more smoothly, we would say death, bardo, and rebirth. Death, bardo, and rebirth is exactly what we are working on getting rid of or purifying in tantra. The topic of tantra, specifically anuttarayoga tantra, is to get rid of our ordinary death, bardo, and rebirth, which summarizes the first noble truth, true suffering. 

Do you follow that? It’s important to understand that the tantra method really is just a different way of approaching what we do in sutra. We’re just organizing this first noble truth into different categories, of death, bardo, and rebirth. The causes are the same. The causes are our unawareness, grasping for truly established existence, the disturbing emotions that are brought on by that, and then the karmic impulses and all the karmic aftermath and stuff that come about from acting out these disturbing emotions. 

OK. Do you follow that?

Participant: Just one question. The way how death, bardo, and rebirth are defined in tantra… are these instants or is the whole process covered by definition of these three?

Dr. Berzin: He’s saying: Are death, bardo, and rebirth just the instances of this, or are all four of the further existences covered by this? Yes. It does cover all of existence. Death is... we’re talking about here the whole process of how you die, so we’re not just talking about the actual moment of death existence but the stages of dissolution as one dies. Bardo is talking about not just entering bardo, but then there’s all the things that one does in bardo (that one does with visualization and so on as a substitute), it covers all of that. Then in a grosser form as well, which would be comparable to not just the moment of birth, conception, but what one would do during one’s life. Death, bardo, and rebirth does cover the whole thing. 

In Kalachakra they don’t put in bardo here — it’s just death and rebirth — because they say that you can discuss rebirth as covering bardo as well. If you’ve purified death and rebirth, you don’t have to have a separate thing to purify bardo (bardo being the in-between period between death and rebirth).

Participant: Rebirth covers this lifetime?

Dr. Berzin: Rebirth covers our future lifetime, yes. I mean, it’s interesting. In the explanation of the Hevajra practice in Sakya, they talk about purifying the death, bardo, and rebirth that has happened in this lifetime. Tsongkhapa criticizes this and says, “That’s already happened, so how can you purify it?” — that all you can do is purify what will be coming in the future. There are different ways of approaching this that we find in different commentaries.

Participant: How does this relate to what you are targeting with the different tantric practices? Because, for example, you said that Kalachakra is not a practice for the moment of death — it’s a practice for the moment when you see all the energy channels and the drops and all this stuff — but other tantric practices can target those moments of death. 

Dr. Berzin: I’m not quite sure what the question is here. You’re saying: How does the tantra practice relate, because the other tantric practices, not Kalachakra, target the moment of death and Kalachakra doesn’t practice at the moment of death? 

I need to clarify. I don’t know if that was the way that it came across when I explained this point in terms of Kalachakra. This gets very, very technical. The point is: When can you generate a body of a Buddha, or a facsimile of a body of a Buddha, in meditation, in a meditation practice? In the non-Kalachakra systems, you can’t do that while being totally absorbed on voidness, unless you are really at the clear-light-stage time, and even then, it’s not immediately (once you access it then you focus on a body, and then you’re able to do both). But the point being that there are practices that one can… I’m sorry. This is not coming out so clearly. Let me make it simple:

In non-Kalachakra, except for the most very, very advanced stages, you cannot generate a facsimile of a body of a Buddha while being totally absorbed on voidness. Therefore, if you can be totally absorbed on voidness at the moment of death, which is when the clear-light mind manifests, then, as a substitute for bardo, you would generate after that a facsimile of a body of a Buddha. Therefore, there is that type of specific practice at the time of death. Whereas in Kalachakra there’s not so much emphasis on that, because in Kalachakra it’s a method for being able to generate a facsimile of a Buddha while being totally absorbed on voidness, and so it’s a slightly different procedure. But both systems are aiming for purifying death and rebirth; it’s a matter of whether or not you’re including a bardo practice. What I was saying was that — what you are referring to, and perhaps it didn’t come out clearly when I explained it — there’s no bardo practice in Kalachakra from the time of death. The emphasis is not so much on that type of practice. 

Participant: But you also mentioned that the energy system of a human life is necessary for this kind of practice.

Dr. Berzin: The energy system of a human is necessary for this type of practice, yes, in Kalachakra. That’s another reason. Thank you for bringing that up. That’s the second reason, that in Kalachakra the facsimile of a body of a Buddha is generated within the central channel when it’s first generated, and so that can’t be done when you’re dead (in the bardo). It’s just a further detail of the fact that the way of generating a facsimile of a body of a Buddha is different. But this is a very advanced point that you are bringing up, and now I’m trying to explain the very basics. Let’s hold off on these more advanced technical questions for the moment and we can get to them once we have established the foundation here of what tantra practice is all about — highest class of tantra we’re talking, anuttarayoga. 

Methods to Rid Ourselves of Problems and Their Causes

OK. We want to purify death, bardo, and rebirth. Then the question is: What does it mean to purify? This I think requires a little bit of investigation, because purification can mean many, many different things, and there are many different methods that are used in Buddhism to do that. 

Applying Opponent Forces

One method is to purify by means of applying opponent forces. We can apply opponent forces. One example of that would be to meditate on ugliness in order to overcome attachment or meditating on love to overcome anger. This is one way of getting rid of problems and their causes. We’ve had many examples of this. 

Turning Negative Circumstances into Positive Ones

The next one is turning negative circumstances into positive ones. That’s another way of dealing with something which is very disturbing. Like, for instance, if we are experiencing difficulties, we can look at our suffering as depleting our past negative karmic potentials. We can think “By means of this ripening now, may I avoid it ripening into something much worse, like a worse rebirth state or something terrible like that.” 

Also, one can change negative circumstances into positive ones by practicing tonglen (gtong-len, giving and taking). I imagine that “By my headache, may everybody’s headache ripen on me so that nobody ever has to experience a headache.” We turn the negative circumstance into a positive one. 

That’s another approach for getting rid of problems. First was to apply an opponent. This one is to turn negative circumstances into positive ones. 

Applying the Mutually Exclusive State of Mind

A third method would be to apply a mutually exclusive state of mind. When we have grasping for truly established existence, if we meditate on voidness, that “There’s no such thing as truly established existence.” You can’t have, in one cognition aimed at the same object, two mutually exclusive ways of taking that object, both that it does have true existence and that there’s no such thing as true existence. You can’t have the two at the same moment. If we can stay focused on what is mutually exclusive — what’s the exact opposite — of a state of mind, like grasping for truly established existence, that’s one way of getting rid of that troublemaker. 

Manuel, you seem puzzled.

Participant: Yeah. I didn’t get that.

Dr. Berzin: Let me use a simple example. I focus on the table, and with one... We’re talking about the exact same moment. We’re not talking about indecisive wavering, in which you think “Maybe this” and then the next moment “Maybe not.” We’re not thinking of that. We’re thinking the exact same moment. It would be mutually exclusive to think “There is a monster sitting on the table” and “There’s no such thing as a monster.” All right? You can think there’s a monster and then the next moment think, “This is garbage. There is no such thing as a monster,” but not at exactly the same moment in the exact same perception. OK? They’re mutually exclusive. The longer you stay focused on one, the other diminishes, the force of thinking again the other, especially if what you’re focused on is backed by logic and all sorts of tests of validity. 

That’s the main method that’s used in getting rid of unawareness or ignorance. The first two methods are sort of preliminary methods that are used. 

Meditation in Analogy

But then there’s a fourth method. The fourth method is what’s called meditation in analogy, and this is ridding ourselves of a problem by meditating in analogy with what we want to purify and what we want to achieve. This is the method that’s going to be used in anuttarayoga tantra, is to meditate in analogy with what we want to get rid of and what we want to achieve, and that’s done in conjunction with meditation on voidness combined with bodhichitta. But this is the method that we have to understand here for getting rid of the death, bardo, and rebirth. 

The basic method… I wrote this up. This is on my website now. It’s in an article called Methods Used in Buddhism to Rid Ourselves of Problems and their Causes [Now called The Purification Method Used in Anuttarayoga Tantra]. I’ll read this and then explain it as I go along. 

The basic method is to be like a secret agent in disguise and imitate what we want to destroy. This imagery comes from the old Serkong Rinpoche, who loved to explain it this way. He said: Like a secret agent in disguise, you go down to the deepest level of our minds to investigate the natural tendency of the mind to give rise to what happens to us in life. We find out the weakest, vital point of the whole mechanism, and then we sabotage the mechanism so that it stops giving rise to what we want to get rid of. In a sense, we flip the mechanism, so that instead of it giving rise to what we don’t want to experience, it gives rise to what we want to achieve. It’s a little bit like a mental judo. 

Participant: But what if it’s really dark and we don’t see anything of the mechanism?

Dr. Berzin: What if it’s dark and we don’t really see anything of the mechanism? Don’t be cute. That’s not relevant here. No. If you go down and you don’t see the mechanism, you just come back up. You don’t purify it at all. You’re not able to sabotage it. 

Participant: How do we…

Dr. Berzin: Will you be patient please. I am just introducing a long discussion. It will be explained. 

Basically, the model that we’re going to use — and I’ll fill in more on this analogy — is of being a secret agent. We have a basis to be purified, a path that does the purifying, and a result of the purification. Basis, path, and result. This is a structure that we find in so many different places in the Buddhist analysis. You get this from Uttaratantra (rGyud bla-ma). This is Maitreya’s text of the Furthest Everlasting Stream. He explains in terms of basis, path, and result. 

OK. Now, in our case here, all three of these are analogous to each other: a basis that we want to purify, the path that’s going to do the purifying, and the result of the purification. By having the three analogous, then, that path is like a secret agent. What are we looking at here? The basis here is death, bardo, and rebirth. The result is the three Buddha bodies — Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya. These three are analogous to each other, and I’ll explain.

Participant: What is analogous?

Dr. Berzin: Analogous means that they have the same structure. They’re similar. Analogy is the noun; analogous is the adjective of that.

The three are similar. These three are similar — the basis, the path, and the result. The basis is death, bardo, and rebirth. That’s what we want to get rid of. The result is the three Buddha bodies, the attainment of the three Buddha bodies. Instead of attaining death, bardo, and rebirth, we want to attain Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. The two sets of three are analogous to each other, similar to each other. 

In order to accomplish the purification or the getting rid of the basis and to bring about the result, we’re going to use a method that also has the same structure as death, bardo, and rebirth and as the three Buddha bodies (Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya). That is what we’re calling being like a secret agent, going in disguise. We’re going in the disguise of the structure of the basis and the result, and we are going to try to go down to the foundation, which is the clear-light mind. 

What don’t you follow?

Participant: What’s disguise?

Participant: Verkleidung.

Dr. Berzin: You go in disguise, like you wear a Santa Claus costume with a white beard so that nobody recognizes you. Right? 

You go in disguise. You imitate… Your disguise is dressing like death, bardo, and rebirth and the three Buddha bodies. And what you’re going to do is try to go down to the foundation, which is the clear-light level, the clear-light-mind level. You want to sabotage it so instead of having the clear-light level give rise to death, bardo, and rebirth — you apply the understanding of voidness so that the whole mechanism switches, and from the clear-light mind you get the three Buddha bodies rather than death, bardo, and rebirth. This is the method that’s used in anuttarayoga tantra. 

Do you follow that a little bit? I’ll go into more detail about that, but this is the general idea. I will explain about the mechanism and the analogies. I don’t expect that we’re going to get through this in one class, but this is the basic theory of anuttarayoga tantra, of why you are visualizing yourself as these Buddha-figures — what you’re doing, what is the actual essence of the practice. That’s the essence. 

The Meanings of Purification

There are many different meanings of what it could mean to purify death, bardo, and rebirth. We have to understand, again, what it’s not. 

• When we speak of purifying death, bardo, and rebirth, it’s not purification in the sense of removing stains from something, like purifying our mental continuums of fleeting stains. It’s not that we have an everlasting continuity of death, bardo, and rebirth, like we have an everlasting continuity of a mental continuum, and we work to make this endless continuity free of stains so that we have a nice death, bardo, and rebirth without stains. It’s not that type of purification. It’s not that we want to continue to have death, bardo, and rebirth but without stains. OK. That’s not what we’re doing. 

• Second one. It’s not purification or cleansing in the sense of chasing away interferences from death, bardo, and rebirth, like when you purify the offering substances you chase away harmful spirits or disturbing qualities from flowers that make us sneeze. In tantric practice, you imagine fierce figures emanating from your hearts and chasing away all these interferences. In that way we purify the offerings — we rid them of disturbing qualities so we can enjoy them purely. It’s not that we’re working to chase away interferences so that we can enjoy death, bardo, and rebirth more purely, free from confusion. That’s not the kind of purification that we’re doing. 

• Third one. It’s not purification in the sense of making the later moments of the continuity of death, bardo, and rebirth better. For example, we speak of developing love, the wish for everybody to be happy and have the causes for happiness. In the beginning our love is directed only at our loved ones, people who are close to us, and it’s mixed with attachment. As we progress on the path, we purify that love so that it becomes extended out to more and more beings with an equal attitude toward everyone. In that sense, we purify our love so that it becomes better, becomes purer. That’s not what we’re doing here. It’s not that we’re making the continuity of our recurring death, bardo, and rebirth better, for instance, by getting better rebirths. That’s not what we’re doing either. 

• It’s also not purification to make the later moments of the continuity of death, bardo, and rebirth be of a different quality. Like instead of eating food with attachment, we imagine ourselves as a Buddha-figure and that we enjoy purely, without any confusion, the offerings that we imagine being made to us. It’s not that — and this is an important one — it’s not that we are striving to experience death, bardo, and rebirth in a different quality. It’s not that we’re striving to continue to die and go through bardo and rebirth, but instead of doing that as an ordinary person, we want to do it as some sort of pure deity who dies and is reborn more nicely in a paradise. That’s not the type of purification that we’re doing. 

• What we are doing is the fifth type of purification. The fifth possibility is purification in the sense of ending the continuity of uncontrollably recurring death, bardo, and rebirth by eliminating its true cause. That’s the type of purification we’re doing. We want them to stop continuing and never occur again. It’s not that we want to change its continuity, it’s not that we want to make the continuity better, it’s not that we want to remove the stains from the continuity, it’s not that we want to chase interferences away from the continuity — we want to stop it forever. When you hear the expression “to purify death, bardo, and rebirth” what it really means is to purify ourselves from experiencing ever again death, bardo, and rebirth. Do you understand? 

Participant: Ourselves becomes a difficult word in that.

Dr. Berzin: Right. To purify our mental continuum. Purify the mental continuum from experiencing death, bardo, and rebirth ever again by getting rid of the causes of it forever — unawareness, disturbing emotions, and karma. 

Participant: Does it apply to uncontrollably? 

Dr. Berzin: She says: Does it apply to uncontrollably? In other words, controllably recurring rebirth. I must say that the word uncontrollably I’ve added. That is not actually specified. You see where that word is coming from in my explanation is: you talk about death, bardo, and rebirth under the power of — that’s in Tibetan — under the power of disturbing emotions and karma, both of which come from unawareness. That means it’s under the control of that, so we don’t have control over it. Let’s not get into a truly existent me, separate from the whole thing, who is a control freak and has control and so on. We’re not talking on that level at all, but we’re talking about that just helplessly the whole thing is going on. It’s not that we want to have it continue to go on but now we’re in control and we direct it. (I should put that in there. That’s yet another possibility of what it’s not.) It’s not that we want to… 

Now this becomes a touchy point, because we have tulkus, and the tulkus although are… The tulkus. First of all, tulku (sprul-sku) — that’s the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit word nirmanakaya, so an emanation body. It doesn’t necessarily mean an emanation body of a Buddha. There are pathway emanation bodies as well. The term nirmanakaya is used on the path as well as in terms of the result. But this is a difficult phenomenon to understand. First of all, from a point of view of seeing your own teacher as a Buddha, or is a Buddha, then of course whether the teacher is a tulku or not is irrelevant, and so that is not pertinent to our discussion here of tulkus. In general, if you speak objectively, most of them are certainly not going to be enlightened Buddhas. They’re on the path. 

What do you have to generate in order to… what stage do you have to reach in order to generate a line of tulkus? What you have to generate is strong bodhichitta, certainly. What level of bodhichitta, I really don’t know, I’m sorry to say. Whether you have to have unlabored bodhichitta, the first of the five paths or not — this I don’t know. I haven’t seen that specified anywhere. But certainly very, very strong bodhichitta. Then you have to have proficiency on the generation stage practice, this practice that we are describing here now of practicing similar to death, bardo, and rebirth. You have to have very strong prayers that you want to be a tulku, that you want to be able to continue manifesting in a form and situation in which you can best help others. In addition to that, there have to be disciples or people who look for you, who would like for there to be a tulku and who will actually go out and look for you and raise you as a child. All of these things have to come together. It doesn’t mean that in each lifetime you have to do all of that. The force of the meditation of the one that starts the line can be sufficient. 

Now it starts to get complicated, because as His Holiness the Dalai Lama has explained, it is possible that... Let’s say there is a tulku who dies. His Holiness uses the example of the Dalai Lama. There can be somebody who’s not the mental continuum of the Dalai Lama, of the first one, who makes very strong wishes and very strong prayers to be able to follow the type of practice and the type of work of the Dalai Lamas, and by the force of their practice and prayers, they could be recognized as the Dalai Lama. It’s very interesting. His Holiness has explained that he feels that the First and the Fifth and the Thirteenth Dalai Lamas — that he is the reincarnation of the continuity of them but not necessarily of some of the others. It’s not as simple as what I certainly believed until I read that from His Holiness. There are many possibilities that are here. That starts to begin to open up other explanations of when you have a line of tulkus in which there is a body, speech, mind, qualities, and activity incarnation of the Khyentse line. 

Participant: This has to do, then, with the aggregates, which of the aggregates manifest.

Dr. Berzin: No. This is exactly what I’m saying. It helps to understand that when you have multiple aspects of an incarnation line, they may not all necessarily be from the same mental continuum. Because they certainly don’t know what each other is doing. It could be, again, cases of other mental continuums having the strong wish, and the strong karmic connection obviously, to then be recognized as this one or that one. We’re not talking about false candidates that the mother or the father puts forward in order for getting fame to the family or whatever. We’re not talking about those. It’s rather complex when we talk about that. 

To get back to where this sprung from, which is controllably recurring rebirth or uncontrollably recurring rebirth — is it really choosing? What does control mean? I don’t know. Rather than it being under the power of disturbing emotions and karma, it’s under the power of prayer and bodhichitta and tantra practice. I think we have to not get too caught up by this perhaps unfortunate choice of words that I use of uncontrollably recurring. It’s not that it would be controllably recurring, but it would be more under the influence of meditation and practice rather the influence of something that just automatically happens. In other words, it would be conscious. But this isn’t the final aim. The final aim is to become a Buddha. 

Questions and Answers about the Three Bodies of a Buddha

Participant: You explained you want to get rid of rebirth and bardo and… this process, you know? But when you want to manifest as a Buddha, I think for me it’s more that you want to get rid of uncontrollable rebirth: you want to have rebirth as a Buddha.

Dr. Berzin: But, she’s saying, don’t you want, as a Buddha, to be reborn as a Buddha? No, it’s not quite like that. 

Now we have to understand a little bit about a Buddha. Not simple. You have the three bodies of a Buddha — Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. Dharmakaya is the all-encompassing mind of a Buddha, omniscient mind of a Buddha — not just omniscient, but with all the qualities of compassion and love, etc., and the voidness of that, but let’s just speak about the mind of a Buddha.

Participant: It’s that that you want to attain.

Dr. Berzin: Well, let me explain. Let me explain. 

Then there are the two levels of subtlety of appearance of that enlightening mind. There’s Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya. Sambhogakaya is subtle, and Nirmanakaya is a little bit grosser. Sambhogakaya, according to sutra, has five certainties: 

• it always has the thirty-two major and eighty minor signs of a Buddha, 
• always is teaching Mahayana, 
• always teaching in pure Buddha lands, 
• always teaching to an audience of arya bodhisattvas, 
• and lives forever till the end of everybody’s samsara (which is a theoretical point, because it never says in the teachings that everybody will achieve enlightenment; one strives for that, but it doesn’t say that they will and then what will happen). 

There are these subtle forms. They’re not going into... they just appear. It’s not that they have a birth — an appearance of a birth and a death. 

Then there is Nirmanakaya. Nirmanakaya would be a grosser emanation of Sambhogakaya, which have several forms. There’s a supreme emanation body, which would be like Buddha Shakyamuni with the signs, thirty-two and eighty physical signs. There is a Nirmanakaya as an artist (Buddha manifested in a form that was able to tame some heavenly musicians, some gandharvas, by a music contest). And then there is a Nirmanakaya as an ordinary personage, so not necessarily with the thirty-two and eighty physical features. 

Sambhogakaya can also be explained as the speech of a Buddha — that’s the explanation in the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga — which also is an appearance, a physical appearance (now in the form of sound), of an enlightened body of a Buddha. A grosser manifestation of that would be a physical body that teaches that. There’s that explanation. And in Kalachakra it says it’s both, both the subtle forms and the speech.

The three of them, if we go to the teachings in Uttaratantra (rGyud bla-ma, Furthest Everlasting Stream) — this is a sutra text — have no beginning and no end. They’re not created. They’re something which is attained. Then you get into all sorts of discussions of that. But the attainment is something which has a beginning, but the actual bodies aren’t something which are created. That’s complicated, so let’s not go into that. But the point being that they’re simultaneous and they never end, and so it’s not that a Buddha is… 

First of all, whether we’re talking about Sambhogakaya or Nirmanakaya, they certainly don’t go through a bardo between manifestations. You have various appearances: A Buddha can appear as a bridge. A Buddha can appear as anything. Then the discussion of death, bardo, and rebirth is irrelevant. If a Buddha is appearing in a Sambhogakaya form, certainly there’s no growing up as a little kid and getting old or anything like that. They stay the same appearance. 

In Nirmanakaya forms — again you’d have to say that there are the elements of the body. The elements of the body, which would be coming from sperm and egg of the parents and so on, are a basis on which you can label, in a sense, a Buddha. We’re not talking exactly about labeling a Buddha, but that would be a basis. Nirmanakaya is actually a grosser form than Sambhogakaya, but still it’s not made of gross elements. It takes as a basis these elements, and these elements will go through a process, and they are made pure by the fact that there’s a pure thing which takes it as its basis. I know this now starts to sound like some soul, doesn’t it, a very Hindu thing, that sort of clamps on to a physical basis, but this is the way that it’s explained. And that basis goes through the twelve deeds of a Buddha: a childhood, growing up, etc., growing old, and passing away. There’s no bardo. But it is not that the Nirmanakaya itself is going through this. It’s manifesting that — it’s making an appearance of that — on the basis of these physical elements acting under the normal things of what happens with a child. It’s explained like that. The actual Nirmanakaya doesn’t have a birth or a death. 

As I say, all of this becomes very... Once you start to look at Buddhism in a larger context of Indian philosophy and Indian religions, you see that it is really talking about so many exactly the same things. It’s just that you add on to it the understanding of voidness, so that we’re not talking about some concrete, unchanging thing that then — like a soul — that latches on to a physical body. But the general structure is pan-Indian thought, general Indian thought. 

Participant: That basically is an avatar.

Dr. Berzin: It’s an avatar.

Participant: Except it’s without the concept of a soul.

Dr. Berzin: It’s an avatar without a concept of a soul.

Participant: Is it correct, then, to say the mental continuum takes form without an atman?

Dr. Berzin: Right. The mental continuum, which is void of truly established existence, changing from moment to moment, without there being an atman, then takes form. Yes.

Participant: By being purified of the three poisons, and revealing wisdom and compassion… 

Dr. Berzin: Right. A Buddha will manifest, a Buddha will connect with the... A Nirmanakaya will connect or conjoin with the elements, five elements, that make a bridge or a chicken or whatever.

Participant: That would be the inevitable result of practicing correctly with bodhichitta.

Dr. Berzin: It becomes... You say the inevitable result. Let me make this more specific. A term that’s used in dzogchen is spontaneously establishes (lhun-grub). It spontaneously establishes appearances, and this means that... This you have in everybody’s terminology, all the schools: effortless (’bad-med). The enlightening activity of a Buddha, the enlightening influence of a Buddha, is effortless. What does that mean? Buddha doesn’t say, “Oh, I see this family over there, and I’m going to go help them.” Like Buddha has all these monitors up there and is looking at every situation and decides that he’s going to manifest here and manifest there. It is more in terms of it is an automatic response to whatever is needed at the time.

Participant: More like the metaphor of the sun shining.

Dr. Berzin: Like the metaphor of the sun shining. Not just that the sun shines on everything that comes out into the sun, but also — this is a slightly different point that it’s trying to illustrate — but that a moon can be reflected in all bodies of water simultaneously. 

Participant: Without trying.

Dr. Berzin: Without trying. Without trying, without thinking that I want to, etc. Is that with control or not control? Control is the wrong word, so I’m sorry that that’s misleading you. It’s under the power of — wang (dbang) is the word that’s used in Tibetan — it’s under the power of bodhichitta. It just happens. But it’s not under the power of an ego that’s saying that “I want to manifest in this family.” 

Now the thing with the tulkus is like that, except for very, very rare cases, like with the Karmapa. It’s not that they leave a clue behind, that “I’m going to be born in this family,” etc., etc. The circumstance will bring it automatically, that they are born in this or that family, without some sort of being in bardo looking down and “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” and then chooses this family that I’m going to come to. It’s not like that. It happens automatically. If I can bring in an aside: I like astrology. I think that this is the way that astrology works as well. It’s sort of there’s this configuration that just happens to fit this type of situation, and so that’s parallel to the whole thing, analogous. The same word that we’re using. Analogous. It’s descriptive. It’s just descriptive that they will be born from all the causes and conditions. 

A tulku doesn’t have to be an arya, doesn’t have to have nonconceptual cognition of voidness. Hardly any of them do. They have a lot of karmic aftermaths, so in addition to all the force of prayers and bodhichitta and practice that they have, they have other karmic things on their mental continuum, and so this is likewise going to influence the situation in which they’re born. Similarly, the way that they’re brought up is going to influence which various things on their mental continuum are going to ripen. You have some tulkus that disrobe, go to the West, and spend the rest of their life waiting on tables in a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, San Francisco. I know of one like that. Everything is dependently arising here. We shouldn’t think of it as simplistically as “They’re all Buddhas and they decide ‘I’m going to be reborn in this family’ and there they are.” It’s much more complicated than that.

Participant: But the Karmapa was writing that…

Dr. Berzin: Karmapa... right. How that happens and at what level the Karmapas are on, I have no idea. But I can tell you — because His Holiness the Dalai Lama has written it in a book — that His Holiness says that he doesn’t think that everybody in the line of Dalai Lamas is the same mental continuum and that he is in the mental continuum of all of them. He thinks especially the Fifth and the Thirteenth more than any of them, that he really is… 

Participant: The last one.

Dr. Berzin: The last one. The Fifth and the Thirteenth, the one right before him — that he really is the continuum of those.

Participant: But it can be probable if there’s an example there of writing.

Dr. Berzin: But there is an example — that the Karmapa does seem to have this custom of writing some indication of where they will be found. Is it infallible? I don’t know. Are there disputes? Yes. There’s a dispute in this lifetime. Are there disputes about the authenticity of the note? Is there a dispute about the authenticity of the note? Yes. Politics comes in. This is what I’m saying. Does this have to do with all the various karmic stuff on the mental continuum of the Karmapa? Undoubtedly.

Participant: Then it’s also complicated that the Karmapa and the Dalai Lama are two different facets of the same…

Dr. Berzin: Oh, now you get another complication, that the two, the Dalai Lama and the Karmapas… And there are going to be plenty others. How about King Tri Song-detsen and Songtsen Gampo and Dromtonpa, and all these people, all being manifestations or emanations of Chenrezig. What does that mean? 

Again, as His Holiness has stated or written, there are different levels that one can understand this. One: there can be those whose actions are like a Manjushri or like a Chenrezig, who have the strong wish to be like Chenrezig, and a strong practice and so on. There is that. There’s also those who are inspired — sometimes that’s translated as “blessed” (this is the word chinlab (byin-rlabs, Skt. adhishthana)) — so they have the inspiration of… His Holiness takes Chenrezig also on the level of actually being a being, that Chenrezig has this special type of connection to protect and take care of Tibet, just as Manjushri has for China, Vajrapani for the Mongolians. Where this comes from, this sort of thinking, who knows? I mean, political implications can be drawn from all of that. 

But then you could say, as His Holiness says, “Chenrezig had some sort of plan for the Dalai Lamas and for Tibet,” and so on. You can say that these figures, the religious kings, Songtsen Gampo, Tri Song-detsen, and Dromtonpa, who established the Kadampa tradition from Atisha in Tibet, and so on, and the Dalai Lamas and Karmapas, etc. — they all fit into the general plan of Chenrezig for the development and protection of Tibet. (Though now of course you have the question, like of Job in the Bible: What’s Chenrezig doing now about Tibet? “Why have you forsaken me?” type of thing, but let’s not go into that.) You could say that “All these beings are emanations of Chenrezig,” or you can say that all of them have been specially inspired, that they have their own mental continuums and they have been inspired by Chenrezig, in a sense, to do the work of Chenrezig, and so in this sense they are emanations, like attendants or servants or something like that are emanations.

Participant: Secret agents doing Chenrezig’s work.

Dr. Berzin: Secret agents doing their work. Well, it’s a different image here. I’m thinking more of... Let’s say you’re a meditation deity, you’re Yamantaka, and you emanate various forms to chase away interferences to do your work. Are they the same… I mean, here the analogy isn’t quite the same. But more what it is, to give maybe a better analogy, is when Buddha — you have this in The Heart Sutra — through the inspiration of the Buddha, sometimes translated as “blessings” of the Buddha, then somebody in the audience gets up and delivers a sutra. Are they an emanation of the Buddha? No, not quite. They’re doing the work of the Buddha, yes. 

I think there are many different levels on which we can start to try to understand these things, and it’s not so simple. 

OK. We’re pretty much at the end of the hour. But to recapitulate what we’re talking about here: We are talking about purifying death, bardo, and rebirth. It’s not that we are applying an opponent force for it. It’s not that we are changing a negative circumstance… Well, in a sense, we are changing a negative circumstance into a positive one if we can do practice at the time of death, but that’s not really the thing. I mean, to get rid of death, bardo, and rebirth, we have to get rid of what’s causing them and get rid of that forever. It’s not that we want to make death, bardo, and rebirth itself pure. We don’t want to make it better. We don’t want to chase away interferences from it. We want to stop it completely. It’s not that our ultimate aim is to have a death, bardo, and rebirth that is under our control of compassion. (This, I think, has to be added. Thank you for bringing that up.) It’s not quite that either. Because the way that a Buddha operates is not really — although it may look like birth and death, it’s not quite the same, not quite the same.

Participant: Could you explain why the three Buddha bodies are connected to this?

Dr. Berzin: Why the three Buddha bodies are connected? Let me just give a very brief introduction to that, because we’re not going to have class for the next two weeks (I’ll be in Mexico). 

Death — the mental continuum goes down to the subtlest level, then you just have the clear-light mind, the same thing as with Dharmakaya. Then in bardo there’s a subtle appearance, and with rebirth there’s a gross appearance of a body. Similarly, Sambhogakaya is a subtle appearance of a body, Nirmanakaya is a gross appearance of a body. The structure is similar. It’s not exactly analogous, because death, bardo, and rebirth occur in sequence. When you attain Buddhahood, you attain all three bodies simultaneously; it’s not that first you attain a Dharmakaya and then it appears as Sambhogakaya and then it emanates as Nirmanakaya. It’s not totally the same, but the structure, the analogy, is similar. 

What we do in the tantra practice is imagine that we go down to a clear-light level in the imagination, combine it with meditation on voidness, then imagine — this is generation stage — that you are in a subtle form (a seed syllable, for example) and then in a grosser form, a form of a Buddha-figure.

Participant: How is there an analogy to body, speech, and mind?

Dr. Berzin: The body, speech, and mind analogy? The mind is the most subtle, and speech and body are appearances of it (an appearance of the understanding in sound and then in a body that makes sound).

Participant: That’s also valid in tantra?

Dr. Berzin: That also is analogous in the tantra system. Because when you talk about the three Buddha bodies, you can talk of them as being the mind, speech, and body of a Buddha.

Participant: Is that done in anuttarayoga tantra?

Dr. Berzin: Is that done in anuttarayoga tantra, spoken like that? No, not really. Not really. I mean, you have other systems that correlate it differently. Like in mahamudra you can speak about the bareness of the mind (that’s like Dharmakaya), and then the mind’s basic activity of making appearances is like Sambhogakaya — that’s covered by the word clarity actually, to make appearances — and then the actual appearances themselves (that’s like Nirmanakaya). So you can see the same structure if you do mahamudra tantra meditation.

Participant: You mentioned in the beginning with Hevajra that there is some special thing in the Sakya tradition.

Dr. Berzin: Sakya says that you’re purifying the death, bardo, and rebirth that’s happened already, of this lifetime. Tsongkhapa says, “Hey, we’re talking about what’s going to happen in the future that you purify.”

Participant: Are there some deities who are only related to one tradition, or is there a Hevajra practice that… 

Dr. Berzin: Are there some deities that are only related to one tradition? Not that I know of. Not that I know. There is a Gelug tradition of Hevajra. A deity is just a structure. Now we get into deities. There’s a lot that needs to be covered in tantra. We’re just beginning really the main part of our discussion of tantra. 

Deities, or Buddha-figures, can appear in many, many different forms — different colors, different numbers of arms, different numbers of legs, different numbers of faces, standing, sitting… All of them could be a Chenrezig. You have four-arm Chenrezig, you have two-arm Chenrezig, you have thousand-arm Chenrezig, you have Chenrezig standing, you have him sitting, with consort, without consort, pink, white… Tara comes in a vast assortment of colors. You have that. And then for any particular form, it can be practiced in a Gelug way or a Sakya way or a Nyingma way or a Kagyu way. Even within those traditions, there can be different ways of practicing it. And within the four classes of tantra you can have different classes of practice with the same deity. There is a kriya tantra practice of Vajrapani. There’s an anuttarayoga practice of Vajrapani. Same thing with Tara.

Participant: You say it’s a structure.

Dr. Berzin: Same thing with Chenrezig. 

Structure. It’s a package, in a sense. It’s a form. That form can take many different forms and many different practices can be done with any of those forms. 

Participant: You can fit many of them there.

Dr. Berzin: Fit, right. I mean, what’s the point of a deity? A Buddha can manifest in any form, so there’s no big deal about this form or that form. The point of the forms is that all the arms and legs and faces and so on represent different aspects of the enlightenment. Rather than try to keep in mind the thirty-seven factors leading to enlightenment, which is hard to do abstractly, instead you have thirty-four arms and body, speech, and mind, for example. You represent things in a graphic form, and each of the arms and each of the legs represents something — and not just one thing; it represents many things. It is a method for helping us to achieve an omniscient mind that’s aware of many things simultaneously and have all the qualities and so on simultaneously. This is why tantra is so advanced. If you don’t have each of these individually (at least to some level) beforehand, how can you put them all together simultaneously? 

Of course, you can practice without really understanding what you’re doing. You’re just visualizing. But then you might as well be visualizing a Walt Disney cartoon. You get the Olympic gold medal for being able to visualize in complete detail a cartoon. So what? Maybe you gain concentration that way. Congratulations, you’ve gotten concentration. But you don’t have to practice Buddhism to get perfect concentration. It’s taught in many systems. 

Tantra is a way of putting things together. 

We have introduced a few ideas here. We will develop them more. Just a general idea of it… Serkong Rinpoche used this analogy of a secret agent. Actually, he used the Tibetan word for spy but I think secret agent is much better because it also implies the whole secrecy aspect of tantra as well — that you go in to sabotage something, and the disguises that... you disguise yourself as a Buddha. You imagine that you are a Buddha-figure and use this disguise for getting down to the clear-light level of mind so you can sabotage the system, so that instead of it working under the influence of karma and disturbing emotions (which then makes it generate death, bardo, and rebirth), that you have it operate under the influence of bodhichitta and voidness (so it will generate the three Buddha bodies instead). OK? We will fill in more detail as we go on.

For the next two weeks we will not have class, but we’ll resume after that. I forget what date that is. The 11th of November will be the next class. OK? Thank you. 

We end with the dedication. We think whatever positive force and understanding has come, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.